Dr. Benny Peiser and I have now begun our 2024 GWPF U.S. speaking tour. Yesterday we appeared for an event at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. Between in person and online, we understand that over 400 people attended the event. (I believe that video of this event will be posted at some point on the TPPF website, but I don’t find it there yet.). Tonight we will be speaking at the 3 West Club, 3 West 51st St. in New York City, at 6 PM.
As mentioned previously in my post two weeks ago announcing tonight’s event, the title is “Europe’s Net Zero rebellion, European elections, and the coming U.S. reckoning.” Benny will cover the European piece of the subject matter, while I am taking on the “coming U.S. reckoning.” I’ll give you here a brief preview to whet your appetite.
The reason I use the term “reckoning” is that people in positions of authority, who have no idea what they are doing, in their zeal to eliminate “carbon emissions,” have set up mandates and goals that are completely irreconcilable. As a matter of physics or economics or both, the things that have been mandated to occur cannot all be accomplished at the same time, let alone within the time frames specified, or at anything close to affordable cost. Some time soon, a reckoning is inevitable.
Many examples of the irreconcilability can be cited, both at the federal level and among blue states that have eagerly sought the mantle of “climate leader” without ever doing even a cursory investigation of feasibility. For this preview I’ll focus on one particular example: the mandates in New York that dispatchable natural gas power plants be closed at the same time that demand on the grid dramatically increases from simultaneous mandates for electric cars and electric building heat.
New York has multiple agencies involved in the supposed energy transition. A Climate Action Council, plus an agency called NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Agency) actively promote the development of wind and solar generators as the wave of the future, without knowing or caring how it will all work. Then there is the New York Independent System Operator, NYISO, that is responsible for making sure that the grid works. NYISO knows full well that the various mandates cannot be achieved simultaneously, but they also recognize that that view is not in favor politically at the moment. So NYISO puts out documents that seem on their face to be saying that everything is fine; but if you read between the lines, you realize that they are sounding the alarm.
Here is NYISO’s document called the “2023-2032 Comprehensive Reliability Plan,” issued November 28, 2023. Read it without a skeptical eye, and you might come away at first thinking that all is well, or at least close to it. Phrases like “meets all currently applicable reliability criteria . . .” are sprinkled around. Yes, there are references to things like “a variety of risk factors to the long-term plan,” and the possible need to keep some natural gas peaker plants around longer than might be hoped, but that is only “as a last resort,” and only until some “permanent solution” is in place.
We then come to the following chart, presented at page 6 with little comment. Oh wait, it shows a big drop in “existing supply” in 2025 — next year — due to the forced closure of some of these natural gas plants, and expected demand then being right in the middle of a part of the bar labeled “deficiency.” That’s rather soon. Oh, it seems that (after this document was issued) they have just delayed the closure of those natural gas plants. Crisis averted, for the moment. Then in 2026 there is an addition to supply, shown in blue, representing the opening of a new transmission line to import hydro power from Quebec. But that’s only about 1 GW of additional capacity, out of 11+ GW of so of peak demand. By 2031, we are back to projected deficiency, which becomes more serious every year — and could be much larger depending on how fast demand grows with all those new mandates.
But the killer is the supposed “long term solution.” You have to get all the way to page 52 to find out that they have no idea what that might be, and even then it is written in code:
With high penetration of renewable intermittent resources, DEFRs are needed to balance intermittent supply with demand. Resources with these characteristics must be significant in capacity. . . .”
“DEFRs”? What are those? They are the elusive “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources.” Just like fossil fuel plants, they can be turned on and off on command to meet demand, but they make no carbon emissions. Voilà — problem solved! Oh, wait — if such a thing existed, wouldn’t we be using it already?
Although they never say it in quite these words, the entire plan post-2030 relies on something that has not yet been invented or deployed at scale. What might it be? Nuclear? That is completely blocked in New York by a hostile political and regulatory environment, and would take at least 15 years to deploy if we started on a crash program today. “Green” hydrogen? That costs something like 20 to 50 times what natural gas costs, and would require an entire new infrastructure of production facilities, pipelines, and power plants, none of which exists or is under construction or even in a serious planning stage. Batteries? Batteries just to get through one calm night (16 hours) would cost about the same as the entire New York State annual budget. Batteries to be sufficient to provide full back-up to a grid without fossil fuels (500 – 1000 hours of average usage) would cost a multiple of New York’s entire GDP.
So in fact, there is no real plan. You can see New York hitting the wall in that chart. The mandates are in place. We march forward, until we can’t any more.
Nice work Francis. These government agencies are disgraceful, if it weren’t for lying and cheating they wouldn’t be doing anything. Get the government out of the energy business and our problems go away.
Steve Koonin uses the coyote (power generation authorities) racing over the cliff in pursuit of the roadrunner (NetZero) from Looney Tunes cartoons as a metaphor for the inevitable outcome of present policies.
It’s a good one but I’m not sure many people nowadays get it.
Again, you’re assuming they don’t know what they’re doing. You would be mistaken.
What is the intention other than the “net zero” fantasy?
They’ve said it over and over again, they want to de-industrialize the West, destroy these powerful economies.
I think Jeff is right. Many on the left are driven by the same impulses and mind sets that allows Paul Ehrlich to remain a respected prophet long after his prophecies were shown to be completely wrong. They believe that civilization is inherently bad, and that we need to get back to some sort of vague, pre-industrial nirvana. They believe we need to get to lower energy usage, less pain inflicted on the planet.
It isn’t logic, it’s faith, as many here and elsewhere have observed. It’s a pseudo-religion that is advocated by people who scoff at Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam. They have no understanding of the climate system, or how much they depend on modern energy delivery, and accept the pronouncements of their clergy, the “climate scientists”, that they only need to believe and then act as directed to achieve a virtuous life. The difficulties presented by reducing our energy use is penance that makes us all more virtuous.
Climate change isn’t a conspiracy. Conspiracies as big as the climate movement fall apart. It’s a religion that will be slow in dissipating, if it ever does.
“Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources” are obviously made by ACME Industries !!!
Dispatchable Emissions-Free AKA
DEF CON 1
“The reason I use the term “reckoning” is that people in positions of authority, who have no idea what they are doing, in their zeal to eliminate “carbon emissions,” have set up mandates and goals that are completely irreconcilable.”
Sorry, but you’re misinformed. They know exactly what they’re doing. Destroying Western Civilization. That’s their goal.
Xi Jinping and the mad Mullahs in Iran laugh themselves to sleep EVERY night.
Pay no attention to that Mann behind the curtain
“Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources.” = Dilithium Crystals 🙂
NuClean energy
Or
ConFusion
Well, see, it’s those pesky laws of physics that are the issue here, and as you all know, laws in the US fall under the purview of Congress. Therefore, we just need to elect enough Democrats and have them repeal the existing laws and replace them with ones that allow for things like perpetual motion machines to be built. Free energy forever, if only the political will existed to go up against the Fundamental-Law Industrial Complex!
/sarc, obviously…
“Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”
Homer Simpson
Seems like a very long fairy tale.
It will be a dark page in history- for students centuries from now to read.
It’s what you get if you are stupid enough to allow strategy to be set set by a Climate Action Council full of know nothing fantasists.
We march forward, until we fall off the cliff…
This is pretty bad, but even greater levels of energy irrationality are about to hit the British.
In about two weeks from now there will be a Labour government with a majority of anywhere from 200 to 400 seats in a 650 seat parliament. The result of the latest Savanta poll would be around a 380 seat Labour majority. The next largest party, which is even greener than Labour, would be the Liberals, with about 50 seats. The UK Conservative Party would almost vanish. It will be a one-party state.
And the Labour Party agenda, which will be presided over by Ed Miliband as Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is to reach net zero in power generation by 2030.
The plan is to do this with 90 GW wind and 50 GW solar. This is to supply peak demand of 45+ GW at present, a figure which will certainly be higher by 2030 partly because of rising demand generally, but also because of the move to EVs and heat pumps. How much storage, and of what kind? No-one knows, no-one is talking about that. Minimal.
This is the UK equivalent of the New York State DEFRs. But its coming towards the British much faster and much earlier than the crisis in New York.
The following quotation comes from the Labour party’s website.
“The Labour Party will create Great British Energy, a new, publicly-owned clean energy company.
We will harness Britain’s sun, wind and wave energy to:
Save £93 billion for UK households.
Deliver one hundred percent clean power by 2030.
Cut energy bills for good.
Create thousands of good local jobs.
Deliver energy security.
Make the UK energy independent.
Labour will build an energy system for the future, run for the British people”.
Obviously, this is completely delusional. The Labour party insists that renewable energy is much cheaper than gas. This blatantly false belief runs through the Labour party and is championed by Ed Miliband who can only be described as an innumerate imbecile. The Labour party claims that the electricity grid will be completely powered by renewables by 2030. We are doomed.
“We will harness Britain’s sun, wind and wave energy…”
Absurd. A formerly great nation to be powered by the gods of Wind and Sun. If I knew how to do AI, I’d ask it to generate an image of the UK and those gods powering it. In the image, the population will clearly be at the Medieval level at best- back when muscle power did most work.
Obviously, this is completely delusional.
Maybe not. For example “Save £93 billion for UK households.” could easily happen if there is no electricity for people to buy. No more pesky electric bills!
Does anybody believe that? Look at wind power in May of this year. Solar drops 90% in the winter. They are beyond delusional.
Large numbers of British people have been utterly brainwashed by the relentless alarmist propaganda in the British media. According to the media, wind and solar power are the cheapest forms of electricity generation. The intermittency of solar and wind is usually not mentioned.
Well, let the people vote and live with the consequences.
There have been numerous schemes to harness tidal and wave energy around the coast of the UK over the years. All have come to nothing as will Labour’s ‘pie in the sky’.
My limited knowledge of UK history is that it WAS the nation of rationalists- unlike the Germanic idealists. What caused the UK to lose its rational mind? The lost of Empire made it feel emasculated so now it seeks effeminate fantasies?
No, don’t think so. The only people who ever talk about the Empire are the lunatic fringe who are trying to ‘decolonize’ everything in sight. You will never hear the Empire mentioned in ordinary conversation in the UK, still less with any nostalgia. It is as gone from view as if it had never existed.
What has happened is that the latest lunacies from the progressives in the US find their way here into mass adoption, and so you had the spectacle of the next Prime Minister and his deputy kneeling in public in response to the death of George Floyd, which had happened thousands of miles away in another country, and which had no bearing on anything in the UK.
What were they thinking of? Nothing. What is Ed Miliband thinking of when he asserts how cheap wind is? Nothing.
Not sure Ed knows how to think.
“Then in 2026 there is an addition to supply, shown in blue, representing the opening of a new transmission line to import hydro power from Quebec.”
How dependable is that hydro power likely to be? I have no clue. Is it less dependable seasonally? During a drought? In winter storms? How about the power lines heading into NY? Are they susceptible to storms knocking them out? Just curious.
“So in fact, there is no real plan.”
They should just ask Al Gore. I’m sure he can give them a good plan. /s
Excellent article. The train accelerates even while we can all see the “wreck-oning” ahead on the tracks.
Demand management is the preferred long term solution. Turn out the lights, shut down manufacturing, stay off the roads, and just huddle around a very small fire of twigs gathered gently from your own front yard, telling inspiring narratives.
Don’t have a front yard? That would be unfortunate…
And you’re iterating how they’ll save billions on electricity – because there is none to buy.
I have to admire the NYISO people. They have learned to survive in a Stalinist environment. Good for them!
”Green energy”. “You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means” (apology to The Princess Bride).
All this is because climate alarmism and practicality are polar opposites. In other words, if a non-crisis is manufactured, it makes sense to fall back on pipe dreams to solve it. Except the solutions are costly and can’t deliver whatever they promise.
“Then in 2026 there is an addition to supply, shown in blue, representing the opening of a new transmission line to import hydro power from Quebec.”
The peak production of hydro power in Quebec is likely in April and May, when the snowpack melts on the Laurentian Shield. But the peak air-conditioning demand in NYC is in July and August, while the hydro power supply in Quebec is lower, as the snowpack has already melted. Besides, Canadians might want to use some of that power to air-condition their own homes during the summer.